Sunday, July 20, 2008

We have three new online traditional animation classes launching for the Fall '08 semester. (not too late to sign up)

ANM 380 Stop Motion Animation 1 - taught by stop-motion animator and author Ken Priebe. Ken is the author of the noted book The Art of Stop Motion Animation . This is a unique course in that is one of the few classes in traditional stop-motion puppet animation offered online by an accredited university. Ken will be following up this class with Stop Motion Animation 2 . (The Academy of Art also has several other Stop-Motion and Puppet Making classes in development for launch online in the near future.)

ANM 261 Introduction to Effects Animation - taught by Kathleen Quaife . Kathleen is a veteran effects animator having worked for Don Bluth, Disney, Warner Bros. Feature Animation , and many other places. She is one of the most skilled and knowledgeable effects animators in the business and has been very successful in applying her traditional effects skills to digital production using Flash and ToonBoom. See examples of Kathleen's work here: Kathleen Quaife reels

Michael's blog is a daily stop for me and if it's not in your bookmarks it probably should be.

This coincides with Danish animator/director/Disney historian Hans Perk's posting of the sequence and scene drafts from Sleeping Beauty. Hans's blog is another must-read for me. The scene drafts are studio documents which give a scene-by-scene breakdown of the films and shows who animated which scenes. This is fascinating behind-the-scenes material.

These great roughs and much more inspiring artwork is currently on Michael Sporn's site. Check it out.